


Fragments

by Blue_Sparkle



Series: Stories of Dwarves, a Hobbit, and their Souls [3]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Nobody Dies, daemon!AU - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-02
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-17 22:24:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1404763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Sparkle/pseuds/Blue_Sparkle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daemon!AU: Hobbits have no daemons and Thorin isn't sure whether he can trust that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Thorin had not known what to make of the Halfling when he joined the company. Apart from being so obviously unsuited for the journey and not being a fighter he just felt _wrong_ in a way.

The Hobbit did not have daemon, didn’t even think one _should_ necessarily have one.

“Why, it seems like a bother to me most of the times” Bilbo said to those who gathered around to talk to him about it. “All I know who do have one, don’t really lead a lifestyle I’d be fond of, I wouldn’t want a daemon like that for myself. Most of my Took cousins do, but they’re not what my family would consider proper. And isn’t the thought of having your soul gone a little bit scary?” 

The others started talking over each other and trying to describe what it felt like, and express their confusion about Bilbo’s notion. Both the Dwarves and the daemons rambled on as if nothing strange had been said, but Thorin’s hands clenched around the hilt of his sword until it hurt, and he had to stand up and walk away, as not to have them see the fury on his face.

Dwalin glanced up from where he was working on sharpening his axes, but it was his Muya who stood up and walked at a little distance behind Thorin, to keep him company as long as he was by himself.

She was a good comrade, one he remembered being near through most of his youth, when he, his siblings and Dwalin had travelled far from any home they ever had. Muya was one of the biggest daemons Thorin had ever seen with a Dwarf; fitting as Dwalin had always been one of the biggest Dwarves his age. The bear was often cheerful and loud and wild when she wanted to, but often she would just be there, quiet and watchful, a reassuring presence for the siblings whose own daemons would always soar high up in the sky.

She and Dwalin both, they were reliable, steadfast and like a rock withstanding wind and weather. Thorin knew he could count on them, knew to see just how well Muya suited his friend, even before she settled in her form. To not have a daemon reflecting your soul was unthinkable for a Dwarf, and here was this Burglar claiming it was nothing but an inconvenience. 

It reminded Thorin of the Elves and the emptiness by their sides. Never had there been one with a daemon, and sometimes Thorin thought they didn’t have souls at all. 

The Elves would see it as another sign of their superiority though; the perfect beings who could contain something as pure as a soul inside themselves, they’d say, and Dwarves, the only race to _always_ have their daemon by their side were simply the mistake made by a Valar, not suited to carry Eru’s gif inside of them.

The thought of it always made Thorin’s blood boil. Always had his people been looked down upon, and always had those without a daemon betrayed them. And Bilbo Baggins didn’t seem to be any better, just another who thought less of them, another who couldn’t be trusted. 

“He agreed to help.”

The soft rustling of feathers shook Thorin out of his brooding, and he looked up to see Reamina land by his side, returned from her roaming flight. She glanced up at him, worry in her golden eyes, just as always when she sensed his mood to be worse than usual.

“I cannot trust one without a daemon” Thorin replied, turning away.

There was a sigh and the clacking of a beak.

“You never had that problem with Men.”

“They do not tend to betray us.”

He glanced back at Reamina when she had no reply for that one. 

_How beautiful my deamon is_ , Thorin sometimes thought, _and how entirely unfitting for me_.

Rea was a magnificent eagle, taller than a Dwarf child, with feathers shining silver and black in the moonlight and a soft crown on her head. She was strong and elegant, a good fighter and inspiring awe, just the right deamon for a King. But Thorin had always wondered whether he could live up to her.

She was the tallest among his siblings’, following his family’s tendency of having large daemons, and even then he had always been nervous about whether she wasn’t _too_ much. Thorin had asked Rea over and over whether she was _sure_ about choosing her form, but her eyes had always twinkled, in sadness or amusement, and she only confirmed.

Perhaps this quest was his last chance to prove himself that he actually did merit having her.

Rea looked over her shoulder and clacked her beak.

“You are having dark thoughts again.”

Behind them Muya shuffled her paws over the dirt, muttering something Thorin couldn’t hear but made Rea laugh quietly. 

“I can’t really help it,” Thorin told her, but both daemons scoffed slightly. 

They had known each other for so long, that both Rea and Muya had adapted certain habits from one another. It made Thorin smile, somehow, as he and Dwalin were the same. In a way they were even more alike than he and Frerin had been, though their daemons had shared some similarities. 

They looked back over to the camp, where Bilbo was in the middle of the company, being questioned by both the Dwarves and their daemons. It was highly unusual; daemons normally would address a person directly if their Dwarves were nearby. They did it for the Halfling though. 

“They should cut that out,” Thorin said. “It’s barely been a month and already they are acting like the Burglar is a close friend.”

Muya made an affirmative noise, but Rea looked uncertain.

“I don’t know…”

Thorin glared at her, but his own daemon didn’t flinch away as another might have.

“He has no daemon but it’s like his daemon is still _inside_ him,” she explained, looking slightly uncomfortable at trying to come up with the words. “I never felt that with Elves, but he… Perhaps it’s because his kind _can_ have one? I want to speak to him but I know I shouldn’t.”

It surprised Thorin.

“You want to?” he asked quietly and Rea shook her wings slightly.

“He intrigues me.”

With a sigh Thorin gently placed his hand on Rea’s back and looked from her to where Bilbo was trying to explain one thing or another to an excited bunch of Dwarves and daemons.

“I will give him a chance to prove himself,” Thorin promised, but quickly added “Do not expect anything, Rea. He’s no Dwarf and I doubt that there is anything about him that would warrant your interest.” 

The bird smiled at him, with her eyes twinkling but her beak unmoving as ever. She was hard to read for others, but Thorin sometimes wondered whether both Rea and him weren’t too expressive anyway. 

They stood in silence after that, with the bear far enough away to feel like they had privacy, and Thorin could not rid himself of the doubt he had had ever since Gandalf made them hire a Halfling without daemon for their quest.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bilbo after the Battle of Five Armies

It was cold in the mountain, and there was nothing Bilbo could do to feel warmer inside, even though he knew that there was no reason for it to be this way.

The forges used to supply warmth for a well thought-out heating system, which kept the mountain and even the deepest inhabited caverns warm. Balin had explained that apologetically, saying that these would need rebuilding and repairing before they were of any use in winter, and then suggested that Bilbo rest in one of the chambers of the royal palace, where most walls had hot water running through them, from the natural springs occurring here and there. 

There were furs, both old and dusty ones from before the fall of Erebor, and new ones, which the Men had traded them, or those the soldiers of the Iron Hills did not need. It was more than enough for one little Hobbit to curl up under, enough to nearly make him disappear under them as he sat on the bed that might have belonged to one of the royal family, once.

There was a little stack of logs burning in the fireplace, and the walls were indeed very warm. The windows where enough to make the room feel light and not at all like a prison cell; holes carved deep into the rock. Bilbo was sure that he’d be able to stretch out on the windowsill comfortably, and still have room left, but apart from the smallest, the windows were shut by plates of some sort of colourful crystal.

Under any other circumstance, Bilbo would have loved it, would have felt the warmth and enjoyed the feeling the room was giving him, with how old and magnificent every part of the palace was. This was pure luxury, and even the layers of dust and the neglect did nothing to change that.

Perhaps it would have been so much easier to enjoy it and feel warm again, if his head wasn’t hurting underneath the bandages and if the pain in his bones wasn’t so persistent. 

Maybe if the ache in his stomach would stop, and maybe if that knot of anxiety would finally disappear. It had started some time after Smaug had first breathed fire close enough to feel the heat waves against his skin, perhaps even earlier, and it hadn’t ever stopped since then. Strange, that Bilbo should feel cold when there was dragonfire all around them.

And maybe that anxiety would just be gone if he didn’t have friends only barely alive, only barely out of death’s clutches and Thorin still too close for certainty.

He had barely been conscious or able to talk, since after the moment Bilbo had been told of his injuries. Thorin hadn’t been able to bring out more than his apology, though his deamon had tried to speak but failed for a lack of words. 

Rea was still conscious, was still guarding her Dwarf’s side and showed no signs of dissolving into a puff of golden smoke yet. Óin had said that this meant hope, but Bilbo didn’t know if he could take that for comfort. He hadn’t dared to walk down again, even though it just hurt him to stay away. He had been too afraid of what he might find.

He had never watched someone die so very slowly, and from such brutal injuries as Thorin had survived until now. He had never seen what happened to a daemon being like this up close.

Would Rea just be quieter and then vanish just like that, or would her feathers drop one by one and fade into nothing?

The thought of her gone was what hurt Bilbo more than nearly anything else. It was not just the knowledge that her passing was just something to go along with Thorin’s death. No, he would miss _her_ , too. Bilbo had never thought of it this way, but Thorin’s deamon was not _just_ an extension of him. She was herself, and so was Thorin, though they both were still one.

Loosing her would hurt just the same way as if she was just on her own, and not a part of her Dwarf.

He’d miss her golden warm eyes, and how she’d speak to him, very quietly but her voice more sure than Thorin’s when they were on their own. She was kind and liked to speak too him, and sometimes Thorin would scoff at that, but later it was mostly just confusion that Bilbo saw in both their faces.

“I’m not used to this,” Rea would tell him. “I always talk to the daemons, but here you are. You seem like someone who’d have one, but you don’t and I’m not sure what to do about that.”

And Thorin would only stare at him, like he was trying to figure him out, make a sense of one without their soul running or flying by their side.

Sometimes they would talk and Thorin and Rea would look around as if they were expecting Bilbo’s daemon to appear from somewhere, unable to shake the habit. Sometimes Rea would get restless when Thorin touched Bilbo, feeling a need to be by the side of the Hobbit’s daemon and mimic the way Thorin’s hand brushed over Bilbo’s cheek.

They might be gone by the next morning, or even the next time Bilbo could bring himself to walk down. He couldn’t, the fear was to great, and there was _nothing_ he could make himself do at all, not even to try and get warmer. The others would worry, soon enough, but so far Bilbo had managed to seem as fine as it was possible in such a situation.

Bilbo stared towards the window numbly, lost in his gloomy thoughts, and not really seeing anything at all, so it took him quite a while to notice the bird, and even more to see that it wasn’t any of the sort he’d already seen around the Lonely Mountain. He didn’t much care for it, he had more than enough of birds.

The ravens and the crows were deeply unsettling, the former more so. They talked and they were larger than any raven Bilbo had ever seen, behaving more like… like _daemons_ than birds. 

The younger Dwarves had been curious, the ones who remembered Erebor well seemed to get nostalgic.

There were legends about the ravens of Erebor, of how they were somehow the surviving daemons of past lords, not dissolved into the air, that they were souls waiting for their Dwarves to be born, or how Erebor and its magic was somehow creating them. 

Others said that they were just magic on their own, and simply similar to Dwarven souls and that this was why they liked them so.

Bilbo didn’t care, as much as the Dwarves wondered about Hobbits without daemons, he felt uneasy about daemon like creatures with no real person. He was sick of it; he did not want to see the ravens and their tidings, or the thrushes with their messages.

He had half a mind to chase this one away and close the shutters, but that would require him to get up. And this one did not look…

This one was shining with gold and yet was pale with few colours.

“So I found you,” a light voice said, and with a start Bilbo realized that he had never felt so glad to hear someone speak, and that the _bird_ had done so.

The bird flew down onto the floor and then was at his bed in a few short jumps, and as she came closer Bilbo could _feel_ the knot in his stomach dissolving. Her voice had started it, and now she was there, where he could touch, but you weren’t supposed to touch a daemon, now, were you?

“You…” he managed weakly, and she looked up at him with her black eyes, and despite her beak and her being, well, a bird, Bilbo could tell that she was overjoyed and relieved to see him.

“I couldn’t find you, you were in the mountain and then the dragon and the battle and all of it, was such a bother, but I’m here now!”

She pressed against him, her tiny body loosing the gold and looking solid in a way it hadn’t before and as Bilbo’s fingers involuntarily came up to brush over the kestrel’s feathers he suddenly felt warm.

“My daemon,” he said and she nodded. Her name was on his tongue and he wasn’t sure from where it came. “My Protea?”

“My Baggins,” she chirped in reply and he could feel her tremble. She had been in pain, more so than he had. Bilbo hadn’t even recognized that his soul was… out, hadn’t know what to do with this feeling. She couldn’t have been too far at any point, or he hoped so. Daemons felt pain when they strayed too far after all.

“How are you…. How do you _exist_?”

Bilbo knew he should probably react more, maybe have a little freak-out about his soul being a raptor in his lap, and why was she as she was, why now?

She didn’t speak, and Bilbo could feel her gathering her thoughts, calming down thanks to their contact just as he did, and wasn’t it strange to be able to do that?

“It got too much. I needed to stretch my wings and I think I grew too much for you to not have me…”

Protea shook herself and then she fluttered up to his shoulder. 

“You have me, now move, please.”

“Move? Where to?”

“Them. Please, they could fade and I’d never ever get to speak to her like I should have, please.”

She wanted him to see Thorin, and he could feel her desperation to see Rea on her own, to see _any_ deamon, but the harpy especially. 

Bilbo wanted to protest and point out that he couldn’t get up, or how afraid he was, but she already knew this, and her presence made him feel warm and ready to go. Her being there felt like his courage was back.

“All right,” he said, bracing himself.

It was easy to walk the way down to where they had brought Thorin to rest, easy to walk the steps and past the many Dwarves who all lived close by for now. Before it had seemed like an endless and hard way, worse than trekking through the Misty Mountain during a storm.

Protea sat on his shoulder and despite the waves of worry he felt coming from her, she was giving Bilbo strength. At least enough to ignore the fear and the looks that surely were send his way, now that he had such a bird on his shoulder, where previously everyone had known him for the little Hobbit with no daemon.

Would they know? Their daemons would at once, but maybe they would only see what they expected to see? It didn’t matter anyway, what mattered were the company, and that Thorin was still there when he arrived.

Nobody was in the building, it seemed, when Bilbo arrived at the healing house. It was too warm in there, with how many layers Bilbo was wearing, but he ignored it as he searched for the room the King had been left to rest. 

The first thing Bilbo noticed was the smell of herbs and the medicines and tinctures Óin had used on all of them, and the empty cup on the bedside table, then his gaze wandered to the still form on the bed and the bird perched on the edge.

Rea’s eyes were full of sorrow and fear as she watched Thorin’s shallow breaths, but she herself was strong it seemed. It took her a few moments before she turned her head to Bilbo, looking happy and even sadder for a moment before her eyes fell on the kestrel and she tensed in shock.

“You…?”

Protea flew down from Bilbo’s shoulder and pressed herself against the larger daemon, shuddering in a sob and Reamina’s wings curled around her automatically. 

“Since when do you have a daemon?” she managed to ask, but then she shook her head and turned to Protea instead. “I thought I felt you, but of course, if such a thing was possible…”

The daemons seemed to have forgotten about them, and Bilbo turned away from the sight as he heard the rustling of furs, and turned to see Thorin stirring in his bed.

“What is it, did I- did something-“

He sounded pained and confused, they had given him something to make him sleep and numb the pain not so long ago, and it looked like it hadn’t stated working properly yet.

Thorin tried to get up and at least take a look to where Rea was, but even the tiniest motion was too much in his state, both because of weariness and his injuries.

“All is fine, Thorin, Rea just found herself someone to talk to.”

Bilbo wasn’t sure whether he was permitted to, but Protea’s presence and welcome made him bolder, so he reached for Thorin’s hand and wrapped his fingers around it.

Thorin blinked up, surprise on his face.

“You’re here,” he muttered, and his hand twitched weakly as he tried to hold Bilbo’s, too.

“I am,” Bilbo agreed, the ‘of course’ never quite reaching his lips. He’d be too scared if it weren’t for Protea.

“I can’t stay awake,” Thorin slurred, and his apologetic tone was nearly adorable.

“I will be here when you wake up,” Bilbo promised him and that seemed to calm Thorin enough to stop fighting against unconsciousness. 

“Good,” he muttered, and then his breathing grew more regular.

Bilbo managed a smile. He briefly let go of Thorin’s hand to pull up a chair so that he could sit by the bedside. Reamina and Protea were glancing at Thorin fondly, before they turned back to their silent conversation. They had catching up to do after all, and this was a novelty for both of them.

He let them be, content to just sit next to the bed and count the King’s breaths, feeling truly warm for the first time in days.

**Author's Note:**

> Dwalin's daemon Muya is a bear, and Thorin's Reamina is a Harpy Eagle.
> 
> In my headcanon all Dwarves have daemons and they all can be quit a distance away from them, especially those of miners and warriors. Men usually have them, Hobbits usually not, and Elves never have a daemon. Nobody is sure what Wizzards have.
> 
> there's probably going to be one or two more chapters of this


End file.
